Electronic mail (“e-mail”) provides a fast, cost-efficient and increasingly more reliable manner for sending messages electronically instead of sending hard copies of letters. This results in savings due to the reduction of resources required to deliver the hard copies such as, for example, paper, delivery personnel and mechanisms, etc. Thus, e-mail is rapidly becoming one of the most commonly used methods of communication. And as e-mail has become more popular, software developers have attempted to increase the functionality and ease-of-use of the software used to compose and handle e-mail.
An invaluable feature of almost all e-mail software is the ability to attach secondary documents to an e-mail and send both the e-mail and the secondary document to a recipient. The secondary document may be a spreadsheet file, a database file, etc., that was created in a separate software program. When the e-mail is received, the recipient may then detach the secondary document and save it to a separate file. The recipient may then open up the secondary document in whatever software program that was used to create the secondary document or that is compatible.
For example, a user X may be working on a spreadsheet for a budget and need to send the spreadsheet to a user Y, who may be at a remote location, to use in preparing a report. Of course, X could print out the report and send the printout to Y. This would utilize resources such as the paper on which the spreadsheet would be printed and incur costs involved in whatever delivery mechanism is used to deliver the printout. It would be more efficient and faster to use e-mail. Accordingly, X may prepare an e-mail message notifying Y that the spreadsheet file has been attached. X would then have to use either the appropriate keyboard commands or menu-driven commands for the specific e-mail program to attach the spreadsheet file to the e-mail message. This may involve selecting, via a mouse, the menu command “File,” selecting “Attach,” and then choosing the appropriate file to attach.
This example illustrates a fundamental shortcoming with conventional e-mail programs in that the user must remember to attach the secondary document to the e-mail message. It is not an uncommon problem that a user completely forgets, for various reasons, to attach the secondary document before sending the e-mail. As a result, the user will then have to send a second e-mail with the attached secondary document, which requires additional time and consumes computer resources for the user, the recipient, the user's and recipient's local network and the Internet or intranet.